I’ve been a fan of Japanese price-comparison engine Kakaku.com (TYO:2371) for a long time. For nearly every major purchase I make, I check out a comparison of various retailers’ prices over on Kakaku. Recently the service, which is a subsidiary of Digital Garage, announced the addition of a dedicated section for Android app listings and comparisons, which looks like it will be a solid resource for Android users in Japan.
Listed under Kakaku’s keitai/smartphone category, the Android app section will provide application information and summaries, along with ‘kuchikomi’ (or word of mouth from users) and reviews for each major version.
There are sixteen genres of apps to explore, including games, social networking, entertainment, shopping, learning, comic books, lifestyle, and finance. And to break things down even further, there’s a system of even more numerous tags that you can also browse, such as puzzle, calendar, character input, phone book, music, online storage, travel, and coupon.
The page prominently features the top five ranked apps by downloads, as well as list of featured/hot apps. There will also be a third section for apps ranked by user satisfaction, although that isn’t quite ready yet.
If you’d like to learn more about Kakaku, do check out the video overview that we created for the site a few months back.